Web Development

Xamarin 2.0 Readies Developers For A 4:1 Mobile World

By Adrian Bridgwater, February 22, 2013

C# developers can now reach 2.6 billion devices and develop for iOS and Android in Visual Studio

Xamarin 2.0 has been released this week along with the Xamarin Studio IDE and the Xamarin Component Store. The Xamarin platform is based around a developer proposition to be able to build fully native mobile apps across all major platforms.

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According to analyst firm Gartner, the ratio of projects focused on mobile vs. PC app development is expected to shift to 4:1 by 2015.

The Xamarin team uses this conveniently rounded off statistical projection to suggest that many projects are delayed because of the technical complexities of developing for multiple platforms coupled with the severe shortage of developers skilled in each platform's distinct programming languages.

Xamarin bids to solves these challenges by unifying native iOS, Android, and Mac development in C#, the language used by an estimated eight million developers worldwide.

Since launching less than two years ago, Xamarin confirms that it has a community of over 230,000 mobile developers.

Xamarin 2.0 features the Xamarin Component Store, an app store for code, where developers add third-party libraries and native UI controls and themes to their apps with a few lines of code. Also included here is Starter Edition — a free tier that makes it easy for individual developers to get started and experience the power of the platform.

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